Valdez Is Coming

Bob Valdez is an aging Mexican-American sheriff who has spent his career upholding the law in a violent, lawless stretch of the American West. When the wealthy and volatile arms smuggler Frank Tanner provokes a shooting that leaves an innocent man dead, Valdez, who fired the fatal shot in the confusion, sets out to make things right by collecting money for the dead man's widow from those he holds responsible. Tanner refuses to pay and humiliates Valdez instead, turning a matter of conscience into a personal confrontation that pushes the sheriff to take justice into his own hands.

The film was released in 1971 and runs 91 minutes. It was directed by Edwin Sherin, who at this point in his career was known primarily for stage work rather than feature films, and adapted for the screen by David Rayfiel and Roland Kibbee from Elmore Leonard's novel, with Ira Steiner producing. Burt Lancaster, by then a long-established star, plays Valdez. The supporting cast includes Susan Clark, Frank Silvera, Jon Cypher, Richard Jordan and Barton Heyman. It earned a rating of 6.7 out of 10 on IMDb from around 5,100 votes, while on TMDB it holds 6.3 out of 10 from a much smaller pool of 97 votes, a gap that reflects the difference in how widely the two audiences have weighed in rather than a clear split in opinion.